While it was more or less acceptable to glad-hand a few of the starry-eyed front row of the studio audience when he came on, he instead milked the moment dry by traipsing interminably round the rest of them, before embarking on a truly tedious display of mock ignorance to his host’s questions, as if they were so far-fetched as to be beneath his lofty eminence.

Many women still swoon over his best-known role as the calculating businessman in Pretty Woman

Fergus Kelly

It was difficult too to avoid the impression that fellow guest John Malkovich (a much drier wit and more entertaining anecdote teller) found Gere’s performance equally tiresome.

I know many women still swoon over his best-known role as the calculating businessman who turns into Julia Roberts’ prince in Pretty Woman (my wife can recite the script more or less word for word).

If only the real Mrs Gere could be persuaded to come on a future show and reveal what it’s truly like to live with such a monument to self-regard.